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Kevin Fedarko on A WALK IN THE PARK

In this episode of Poured Over, journalist Kevin Fedarko discusses his memoir A Walk in the Park, which recounts his 2015–2016 attempt to traverse the Grand Canyon on foot—a project originally intended as a National Geographic article for the National Park Service centennial. Fedarko explains the extreme physical challenges of the canyon’s fragmented terrain, extreme temperatures, and water scarcity, and how the journey evolved from a straightforward narrative into a complex tale of misadventure and discovery. He also shares his earlier, decades‑long relationship with the Colorado River via whitewater dories, illustrating the canyon’s cultural history and the rarity of continuous foot traverses, of which fewer than a dozen had been completed before his expedition.